Supporting the Paradigm Shift: Hypermedia Construction With Concept Maps ‐ The Easy Way Forward

SUMMARY

Academic organizations would welcome methodologies to help teaching staff overcome the seemingly insurmountable obstacles of time and effort requisite for structuring and developing learning support materials. This article describes an experiment comparing the use of the ubiquitous book metaphor for hypermedia authoring with a concept map‐based authoring tool designed to facilitate expression of knowledge domains. Experiment showed that subjects preferred the concept mapping authoring paradigm although both metaphors produced equitable applications. Both higher spatial relations ability and Windows experience promoted amenability to concept mapping, resulting in more cognitively complex and expressive concept maps. Subjects meeting concept mapping first rated it much easier to learn and use than the book metaphor of which they were subsequently much more negative. Hypermedia authoring metaphors enabling users to ‘picture’ their knowledge domains are beneficial, although this is confounded by their spatial relations ability and computing experience.